NEWS
Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography
The MAC and Belfast Exposed, Belfast
Opening: Thursday 9th May 7-9pm
10 May to 7 July 2013
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| © Victor Sloan |
Since the 1980s Northern Ireland has produced a distinctive body of photographic work, by photographers from within and outside Northern Ireland. The exhibition aims to bring together significant works by key photographers and to examine the phenomenon of new photographic practices in Northern Ireland. Many of the photographers to be included in the exhibition have established global reputations, but have not previously been considered in any sustained way as group of photographers interacting with each other’s work.
Taking a historical and thematic approach, the exhibition will be organised under headings such as The Troubles, The City, The Border, The Archive, Peace and Other Places/Otherwise. It will begin with the media imagery of the Troubles that compelled photographers such as Victor Sloan, Paul Seawright and Willie Doherty to intervene in the flow of press/documentary images which dominated a global, visual portrayal of Northern Ireland in the 1970s. From this response to media and documentary photography an engaged and often polemic aesthetic emerged, individual to each photographer but also shared across diverse photographic practices.
With the Peace Process in the 1990s a new dynamic entered the scene, which compelled photographers to think about the social and political past and future of Northern Ireland.
With the Peace Process in the 1990s a new dynamic entered the scene, which compelled photographers to think about the social and political past and future of Northern Ireland.
While presenting an analysis of it’s broad aesthetics and (often dissenting) relationship to post-Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland, the exhibition will also question the extent to which the theme of conflict has dominated our view of Northern Irish photography. Through the inclusion of work by Mary McIntyre, Hannah Starkey, Gareth McConnell and artists with a keen sense of trends and debates in the wider contexts of contemporary photography and art, the exhibition aims to present photography in and from Northern Ireland as a refection of place in the broadest possible sense.
Photographers include: Craig Ames, Sylvia Grace Borda, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Ursula Burke, John Byrne, Victoria Dean, Willie Doherty, John Duncan, David Farrell, Malcolm Craig Gilbert, Paul Graham, Philip Jones Griffiths, Anthony Haughey, Kai Olaf-Hesse, Sean Hillen, Claudio Hils, Daniel Jewesbury, Peter Marlow, Gareth McConnell, Patrick McCoy, Moira McIver, Mary McIntyre, Sean McKernan, Eoghan McTigue, Jonathan Olley, Mark Power, Paul Quinn, Paul Seawright, Victor Sloan, Mervyn Smyth, Hannah Starkey and Donovan Wylie.
The exhibition is curated by Karen Downey, Senior Curator at Belfast Exposed. Karen also works as an independent curator. In 2009 she curated Northern Ireland’s presentation at the 53rdVenice Biennale with a solo exhibition by Susan MacWilliam, and in 2011 she curated Versions and Diversions at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin. In 2012 she was Lead Curator and Editor for Into the Light: The Arts Council – 60 Years of Supporting the Arts.
Photographers include: Craig Ames, Sylvia Grace Borda, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Ursula Burke, John Byrne, Victoria Dean, Willie Doherty, John Duncan, David Farrell, Malcolm Craig Gilbert, Paul Graham, Philip Jones Griffiths, Anthony Haughey, Kai Olaf-Hesse, Sean Hillen, Claudio Hils, Daniel Jewesbury, Peter Marlow, Gareth McConnell, Patrick McCoy, Moira McIver, Mary McIntyre, Sean McKernan, Eoghan McTigue, Jonathan Olley, Mark Power, Paul Quinn, Paul Seawright, Victor Sloan, Mervyn Smyth, Hannah Starkey and Donovan Wylie.
The exhibition is curated by Karen Downey, Senior Curator at Belfast Exposed. Karen also works as an independent curator. In 2009 she curated Northern Ireland’s presentation at the 53rdVenice Biennale with a solo exhibition by Susan MacWilliam, and in 2011 she curated Versions and Diversions at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin. In 2012 she was Lead Curator and Editor for Into the Light: The Arts Council – 60 Years of Supporting the Arts.
The exhibition is accompanied by a substantial publication, Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography by Colin Graham. Colin Graham lectures at NUI Maynooth, and was previously Reader in English at Queen’s University Belfast. He is the author of Ideologies of Epic and Deconstructing Ireland. He is co-editor of the journal The Irish Review, and of three collections of essays. He has published articles in many journals, including Cultural Studies, Third Text, Journal of Visual Culture, Irish Studies Review, The Dublin Review and Source.
Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography is supported by Arts Council NI and Belfast City Council
The MAC
The MAC
10 Exchange Street West, Belfast, BT1 2NJ.
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Picturing Derry
The City Factory
29 May 2013 - 7 July 2013
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| © Victor Sloan |
The images which brought Derry~Londonderry to international attention in the late 1960’s continue to define how this city is viewed today.
Picturing Derry will, for the first time, bring the collected photographic iconography of the Troubles in Derry~Londonderry together in one exhibition. The exhibition will juxtapose insider and outsider views of the city from the time between when it erupted into street protest and civil strife in 1969 and the final decade of the Troubles.
Photojournalists, including Clive Limpkin, Homer Sykes, Fred Hoare and others from news agencies across the globe made iconic images of individual or family stories and more public moments of spectacle, drama, and tragedy from the conflict.
Photographers from the city – Willie Carson, Larry Doherty, Eamonn Melaugh, Barney McMonagle – were using their local knowledge, contacts and wit to cast a light on some of the previously unseen elements of life in a conflicted city.
Photographs by troops on tours of duty in the city told their own stories of an army in a conflict. In Camerawork, working with international curator Trisha Ziff, a local community challenged stereotypes, and developed an innovative model of participatory photography expressing community identity.
Artists using photography, including Willie Doherty, Sean Hillen, Victor Sloan and others, brought imagination, reflection and provocation as a response to image-making in the media-saturated city.
In Picturing Derry, audiences will be able to make the connections and diversions within this range of images captured by international photographers, the work of amateurs or local news photographers, troops, the community of Camerawork, and artists of international renown. As well as a unique gallery exhibition, Picturing Derry will transform the city into a gallery by relocating many of the iconic images to the original sites where they were first taken.
Picturing Derry is a partnership between Culture Company, the Nerve Centre and the University of Ulster. The exhibition is supported by the European Cultural Fund and will go on tour to Berlin and Dubrovnik later this year.
Derry~Londonderry
UK City of Culture 2013
Derry~Londonderry
UK City of Culture 2013
